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The Barefoot Maid at 
the Fountain Inn 



The Barefoot Maid at the 
Fountain Inn 

By 

Charles Edward Cheney 




Chicago Literary Club 
1912 









Copyright, 1912, by 
CHARLES EDWARD CHENEY 



gC!.A3l6622 







THE BAREFOOT MAID AT 
THE FOUNTAIN INN 

I 




HE rugged coast of New 
England has few points 
more picturesque than where 
the historic town of Marble- 
head looks out on its land- 
locked bay. As Pompeii and 
Herculaneum, unearthed by 
modern excavation, recall 
vividly what Roman cities were when Nero 
sat upon the imperial throne, so Marble- 
head restores to the Twentieth Century 
much of the appearance it wore two hun- 
dred and fifty years ago. Now, as then, 
one seeks in vain a level area amidst the 
jumbled mass of gray rocks forming the site 
on which the town is built. The strata 
are tilted on edge and twisted into weird 
convolutions by some primeval cataclysm. 

7 



To-day, as in colonial times, the wooden 
buildings bid such defiance to all orderly 
and systematic planning of their location 
that a stranger might fancy them to have 
been sown broadcast, as the old-time farm- 
er scattered the seed of a future harvest.' 
Here a quaint cottage may nestle in the lee 
of a beetling cliff, while another like struc- 
ture faces from the summit the fierce winds 
from off the sea. As in the Eighteenth 
Century, the narrow paths which serve as 
streets make their sinuous way in and out 
among the houses — a perpetual sugges- 
tion that the dwellings were built to escape 
human approach, and that the roads had 
later set out to find them. 

But if, like an Egyptian sepulchre, the 
Marblehead of to-day has kept embalmed 
the town which our Puritan forefathers 
knew, there are some features of its present 
life in strange contrast to what it was when 
its citizens were loyal subjects of the second 
King George of England. 

In our day, inside the long and rocky 
promontory which divides the waters of the 
harbor from the rude pulsings of the Atlan- 
tic, each summer sees a congregating of tiny 
sea-craft from every American port, while 
even Europe sends its fleet-winged yachts 
to struggle for supremacy in the annual 
regatta. 

A lonely expanse was the bay of Marble- 
8 



head in the early colonial times. Then its 
surface was furrowed only by the keels of 
the fishing-boats which gave a livelihood 
to its hardy population, while at long inter- 
vals some venturous vessel from London or 
Bristol cast anchor in its quiet waters. 

In this generation wealth, fashion, and lux- 
ury hold high carnival through the summer 
months in the brilliant halls and broad ve- 
randas of great hotels, conspicuous among 
the simple dwellings of the ancient town. 
But in the old times a single hostelry suf- 
ficed for public entertainment. The Foun- 
tain Inn was perched upon one of the rocky 
hillocks which command a view of the open 
sea. Close by was an old and deep-dug 
well of purest water, which gave to the tav- 
ern the striking name it bore. Choked up 
and covered over for perhaps a hundred 
years, its recent discovery and reopening 
have served to identify the site of the fa- 
mous inn which long ago crumbled into 
ruin, but lives imperishable in the historic 
traditions of the place. 

Here the chance traveler of those days 
found a hospitable welcome and such fare 
and lodging as had made the name of mine 
host, Nathaniel Bartlett, known to the far 
corners of the Commonwealth. Here, too, 
of an evening, when the storm beat on the 
many-paned windows, and the booming of 
the surf was like the explosion of great 



guns, the fishermen sat before the roaring 
fire, drank their brown ale, sang their songs, 
and told their weird tales of dories lost in 
the fogs off George's Banks, and of fishing- 
schooners that sailed out of the portals of 
the bay, but which no man ever saw again. 

II 

One summer afternoon, in the year of 
grace 1742, the cheery landlord of the Foun- 
tain Inn bustled to the entrance of his 
hostelry to welcome such a guest as never 
before had crossed its threshold. His ad- 
vent had been announced by the rumble 
on the rocky road of a great coach with 
armorial bearings on its panels, drawn by 
four sleek horses, and attended by liveried 
flunkies. Little wonder that when the cum- 
brous vehicle halted before the door, and a 
footman, leaping from his perch, let down 
the folding steps for his master to alight, the 
astonished Boniface, cap in hand, louted low 
before such unaccustomed splendor. Still 
more must the landlord have been over- 
whelmed with reverential awe when he dis- 
covered that his unexpected visitor was none 
less than Charles Henry Frankland, Es- 
quire, Collector of the port of Boston, and 
next in dignity, as a representative of the 
crown, to Sir William Shirley, Governor of 
the Province of Massachusetts. If histori- 
10 



ans are to be believed, even thus early the 
smoldering sparks of Democracy had begun 
to kindle in the bosom of New England. 
But the fierce conflagration of the Revo- 
lution was yet far down the future, and with 
the fisher-folk of Marblehead blue blood 
counted for much, and those in whose veins 
it flowed commanded an almost obsequi- 
ous respect. Charles Henry Frankland bore 
one of the great family names of the Mother 
Country. Almost from the days of the Nor- 
man Conquest his forebears had been lords 
of the manor of Thirsk, with their seat at 
Great Thirkleby Hall, in the North Riding 
of Yorkshire. The youngest daughter of 
Oliver Cromwell, the favorite of her illus- 
trious father, and a woman of such rare 
charm that, according to Carlyle, Charles 
the Second offered to make her his con- 
sort, was Frankland's great-grandmother. 
Yet despite the alliance with the line of the 
great Lord Protector, the Franklands were 
loyal to the Stuart dynasty, and, at the Res- 
toration, in 1660, the head of the family 
was rewarded by a baronetcy, and became 
Sir William Frankland of Thirsk. Doubt- 
less it added to the dignity of the Collector 
of the port of Boston, when, in 1754, his 
younger sister became the wife of Thomas 
Pelham, Earl of Chichester. 

It is not difficult to discover from the 
annals of the period that of all the aristo- 
11 



cratic society which reflected in the colonial 
capital of New England something of the 
glitter and stateliness of the court of St. 
James, Charles Henry Frankland shone in 
peerless pre-eminence. An education be- 
coming his rank, and a fortune which was 
ample, had cultivated a mind of no ordinary 
acuteness to a degree which gave a schol- 
arly tinge to his character. What we call 
natural science was then in the infancy of 
its development. But Frankland 's acquaint- 
ance with botany, gardening, and scientific 
agriculture was far beyond that of his con- 
temporaries. Well grounded in the Latin 
classics, he spoke French with the ease and 
elegance of ' ' one to the manner born. ' ' We 
have the testimony of those who were his 
companions and intimates that an almost 
undefinable grace of manner charmed all 
who came within the circle of his acquaint- 
ance. Refinement and gentle breeding were 
manifest in his conversation and, in con- 
trariety to the habit of men of his class in 
that age, he treated with equal courtesy 
of address the humblest yeoman and the 
proudest official. In his diary he gives 
expression to this trend of mind, when he 
makes the following entry: "I cannot suf- 
fer a man of low condition to excel me in 
manners. ' ' Two portraits of Frankland are 
still extant — one in this country and another 
in England — both bearing witness to the 
12 



manly beauty superadded to his intellect 
and accomplishments. As one of his biog- 
raphers has said: "He had a refined and 
noble cast of features, with a peculiarly pen- 
sive and melancholy expression. His face 
bears witness to a certain sweetness of tem- 
per and delicacy of taste." 

Such was the visitor whose advent over- 
whelmed the landlord of the Fountain Inn 
on that summer day of 1742. It would be 
interesting to permit imagination to color 
the scanty facts which history has handed 
down. We can fancy the hurried prepara- 
tions to give fitting entertainment to a guest 
so manifestly in startling contrast to the rude 
fishermen and sailors who were the ordi- 
nary patrons of the ancient inn. We can 
see the portly host as he himself shows the 
newly-arrived dignitary to the best chamber 
which his house affords. We can hear his 
orders to the hurrying servants, and his apol- 
ogies to his guest for humble accommoda- 
tions and rustic fare. The bare outlines 
of the incident have been filled in with en- 
trancing lights and shadows in a modern 
novel, and also in a charming poem by Doc- 
tor Oliver Wendell Holmes. That which 
concerns this essay is to relate only what 
actually occurred. Certain it is that, as 
Frankland was descending the staircase of 
the Fountain Inn, his attention was attracted 
to a young servant-maid of perhaps sixteen 

13 



years, who on her knees was vigorously 
scrubbing the floor. Clad in coarse home- 
spun, much the worse for wear, but scru- 
pulously clean, her poverty was emphasized 
by the conspicuous absence of shoes and 
stockings. But, as she looked up at the 
sound of footsteps, and rose respectfully to 
make room for the gentleman to pass, there 
burst upon Frankland' s sight a vision of daz- 
zling beauty. It may be that in maturer life 
some great painter, like Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, tried to portray the charm of her 
womanhood ; but there is no authentic like- 
ness in existence of the barefoot maid at 
the Fountain Inn. Nevertheless, with one 
consent, the writers who have handed the 
story down, bear witness to a loveliness such 
as Frankland had never seen at the court of 
King George, or among the stately dames 
and blushing damsels of the colonial aris- 
tocracy. One author says : "Her ringlets 
were black and glossy as the raven ; her dark 
eyes beamed with light; her voice was 
musical, and she bore the charming name 
of Agnes Surriage. ' ' Perhaps no attempt to 
picture her face and form can rival that of 
Doctor Holmes: 

" She turned — a reddening rose in bud, 
Its calyx half withdrawn — 
Her cheek on fire with damasked blood 
Of girlhood's glowing dawn." 

There can be no doubt that Frankland was 
14 



amazed at the vision of such charms in so 
unlikely a place. The scene, however, which 
followed was singularly commonplace and 
unromantic. 

Frankland asked the child about her pa- 
rents, and, learning that she was the fourth 
of the seven children of Edward Surriage, a 
fisherman of Marblehead, whose poverty had 
compelled his young daughter to earn her 
bread as "maid of all work" at the Foun- 
tain Inn — the pitying gentleman handed her 
five shillings, and bade her buy herself a 
pair of shoes. 

Despite the prosaic quality of this in- 
terview, its memory did not fade from the 
mind of Frankland. The face of the girl 
must have haunted his thoughts, for only 
a few months later we find him again visit- 
ing Marblehead. If he needed excuse for 
return to the spot where he was drawn as 
by a loadstone in the autumn following, it 
was easy to find it in the line of official duty. 
Some years earlier Marblehead had become 
a port of entry, and its revenue probably 
passed through the hands of the Boston 
Collector. In that very year, 1 742, the Gen- 
eral Court had made a grant of six hundred 
and ninety pounds for the protection of 
Marblehead from French cruisers. The 
ancient stone bastions, regarded then as 
proof against the artillery of that period, 
had just begun to frown upon the harbor, on 

15 



the site where to-day the Stars and Stripes 
float over the ramparts of Fort Sewall. It is 
no unreasonable conjecture that Sir William 
Shirley may have designated his next in au- 
thority in the colony of Massachusetts Bay 
to inspect the rising fortification, and to re- 
port upon the progress of the work. Per- 
haps Frankland welcomed his commission 
with a secret joy which he did not himself 
altogether understand. For the Fountain 
Inn was in close proximity to the rocky pla- 
teau chosen as the location of the colonial 
stronghold. 

Be that as it may, it requires no stretch 
of the imagination to believe that Frank- 
land lost no time in learning whether Ag- 
nes Surriage was still scrubbing the floors 
of the Fountain Inn. The scene when he 
again found the girl engaged in her menial 
labor has been picturesquely delineated by 
his biographers. As he entered the tavern, 
he found the object of his inquiry as inde- 
scribably beautiful as a few weeks before. 
Her homespun dress could not detract from 
the exquisite symmetry of her figure. Her 
face was radiant with pleasure at the recog- 
nition of the remembered guest, and her 
low courtesy spoke as plainly of a modest 
self-respect as of honor for one of such 
widely different station from herself. If 
her speech was disfigured by the strange 
dialect which then marked the native of 
16 



Marblehead as unmistakably as to-day the 
abuse of the letter "h" betrays the cock- 
ney, it could not wholly conceal the rare 
sweetness of a voice which in after years 
was celebrated for the music of its tones. 
Suddenly the visitor saw that, with all her 
undeniable loveliness, the girl was still bare- 
foot. With an expression of disappoint- 
ment, he said: ''So you did not buy the 
shoes which I asked you get. " " Oh, yes, 
sir, ' ' was the naive reply, ' ' but I wear them 
only to meeting." 

Ill 

Let us follow Frankland, as, later in that 
October afternoon, he makes his way along 
the rocky path leading to the Surriage home. 
The lowly dwelling was, doubtless, in the 
quarter of Marblehead little frequented by 
any save the poor. Here and there were 
scattered the cottages of the less successful 
fishermen, behind which rose the "flakes," 
or fish-fences for the drying of the catch. 
Why Edward and Mary Surriage were in 
such humble environment — and what vicis- 
situdes of the struggle with barren soil and 
pitiless sea had brought them to such pen- 
ury — it would be fruitless to inquire. But 
the genealogical revival, marking the last 
fifty years, has brought to light that Dame 
Mary Surriage was one of the descendants 
and heirs of the famous John Brown, who, 



soon after the landing of the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth, purchased of the Indians a vast 
tract covering four modern townships in 
the Penobscot Valley. There is reason to 
believe that she had been reared in com- 
parative comfort; and, even in the depth 
of poverty, had retained something of the 
gentlewoman's breeding. The records of 
the ancient Puritan church at Marblehead 
bear witness to the piety of both the parents 
of Agnes Surriage. However destitute the 
humble dwelling of even such graces as 
adorned the homes of their neighbors, their 
roof sheltered a brood of children reared in 
the fear of God and in the daily practice of 
the virtues of religion. Before hard neces- 
sity had driven Agnes to the service of the 
landlord of the Fountain Inn, she had been 
a favorite pupil of the pastor of the Second 
parish of Marblehead. It is no fanciful 
conjecture that a girl, inheriting intellect 
and refinement from an ancestry of distinc- 
tion in the annals of New England, should, 
like our western plains under the touch of 
irrigation, develop a latent fertility of mind 
under the tuition of such a teacher as the 
Reverend Edward Holyoke, afterward the 
celebrated President of Harvard College. 

As Edward Surriage sat before his drift- 
wood fire, drying his garments after the 
day's hard toil at sea, a knock at his door 
woke him from his reverie. Crossing the 
18 



puncheon floor, he lifted the heavy wooden 
latch, to find himself face to face with one 
whose dress and bearing proclaimed un- 
mistakably that he belonged to a class far 
different from the plain fisherfolk of the 
town. 

There has come down to us no authentic 
record of the conversation which followed. 
Only this is certain : Frankland must have 
set before the parents of Agnes the injustice 
of allowing such a maiden as their daughter 
to grow to womanhood in the menial occupa- 
tions and the coarse environment of a com- 
mon tavern. We can fancy the eloquence 
with which he pleaded for the development 
of such a mind and character by a better 
education. It was a sin to permit such a 
flower to " waste its sweetness on the des- 
ert air" of a village like Marblehead. And 
if — as we may readily imagine — an honest 
pride gave way before the glowing picture 
of the possible future of their child, and 
they confessed that only their abject poverty 
compelled them to sacrifice hopes which her 
loveliness and talent had inspired in them — 
Frankland was prompt to suggest a way of 
escape from the obstacles in the path of the 
realization of their dreams. So profound 
was the interest which Agnes had awakened 
in his mind, that he would gladly bear every 
cost involved in the intellectual and social 
cultivation of a girl of such extraordinary 

19 



promise. There is no reason whatever to 
suppose that in this offer Frankland was 
not absolutely sincere, or that any dishonor- 
able purpose lurked like a serpent under 
his generous proposal. There is little like- 
lihood that the courtly and scholarly man of 
the world had fallen in love with a scullion 
in the kitchen of a Marblehead inn — how- 
ever unusual her beauty and the amiability 
of her nature. Moreover, it is evident that 
through the four years following the con- 
sent of the Surriage household to the edu- 
cation of Agnes, although Frankland must 
have seen her almost daily — no breath of 
gossip ever clouded the purity of the rela- 
tion between the benefactor and \n&prot£gei. 
Some of the writers who have handed down 
this romantic story of colonial days assert 
positively that Frankland placed his beau- 
tiful ward under the matronly supervision 
and chaperonage of Lady Frances, the 
charming wife of Sir William Shirley, the 
Governor of Massachusetts. The warm 
friendship which is known to have bound 
the young Collector of the port of Boston 
to the Governor and his lady, gives proba- 
bility to the tradition. 

In Leverett Lane, near King Street, in 
Boston, one Peter Pelham at this time con- 
ducted a school patronized by the wealthy 
and aristocratic families of the New Eng- 
land capital. It was here that the young girl 
20 



began her career as a pupil. But Frank- 
land's well-filled purse was ever open to 
provide Agnes with additional instructors 
in every branch of learning which could 
expand her budding intellect and develop 
her social graces. She was taught not only 
the common elements of mental culture, but 
music, dancing, embroidery, and the various 
accomplishments befitting a young woman 
of wealth and rank. How well and how 
rapidly she responded to these advantages 
rests upon undoubted witness. The singu- 
lar mixture which she displayed of artless 
simplicity and elegant refinement crowned 
her personal loveliness and intelligence with 
an irresistible charm. The stately and dig- 
nified society of Boston received her as 
became one chaperoned by Lady Shirley. 
Her dazzling beauty made her the envy of 
the younger women ; yet her unselfishness 
disarmed the critic, and changed jealous 
rivalry into admiring love. 

Four years of growth, for which Frank- 
land was responsible, had transformed the 
barefoot serving-maid of the Fountain Inn 
into a being whose loveliness made life with- 
out her ' ' not worth the living. ' ' It is clear 
that at first he decided to defy the social con- 
ventions of his Boston friends by honorable 
marriage. But what of his kindred and old 
comrades across the sea ? He was intimate 
with the Earl of Chesterfield, whose perfec- 



tion of manners he was said to have acquired. 
Horace Walpole was his personal and polit- 
ical friend. What would be the comments 
of these cynical gentlemen, when across 
the Atlantic there floated the incredible tale 
that Charles Henry Frankland — the culti- 
vated, refined and accomplished heir of a 
splendid name — had taken as his wife "a 
maid of all work" in a New England inn? 
Or, could he without a shudder contemplate 
the agony of his patrician mother, and the 
horror of the Countess of Chichester, his 
sister, when their pride should be humbled 
by the tidings of such a mesalliance? 

IV 

There is no hallucination more mischiev- 
ous and blinding to the moral sense than the 
notion that genius should condone wrong- 
doing. Yet most of us are prone to permit 
the glamour of a great name in literature or 
science, in arms or statesmanship, to distort 
the judgement till sin looks like righteous- 
ness through the smoke that rises from the 
burning incense of hero-worship. 

King George's collector of the port of 
Boston was not of heroic build. But his 
rank, his education, and the personal charm 
which made him socially irresistible have 
conspired to bias the views of the writers 
who have told the story of Frankland and 

22 



Agnes Surriage. Somehow, the reader of 
the tale gets a vision of prismatic colors, till 
he forgets that the medium through which 
they come has refracted the rays of rectitude 
and truth. For, after all, the social superi- 
ority of the man, the unusual opportunities 
which he had enjoyed, and his undoubted 
intellectual brilliancy really ought to aggra- 
vate rather than minimize the wretched 
wrong which he committed. He betrayed 
a sacred trust to which he had pledged his 
honor, when the parents of the girl gave her 
education into his keeping. 

No doubt a righteous judgement involves 
also the condemnation of Agnes. But it is 
to be remembered that the circumstances 
of her life had led her to look up to Frank- 
land with something of an Oriental idolatry. 
He had found her a poor, barefoot me- 
nial, engaged in the lowest services, with 
no thought of any uplifting above the sta- 
tion to which she has been born. Out of 
a boundless generosity he had opened to 
her the door into a new life. Not a want of 
hers which he had not anticipated and sup- 
plied. Through four years he had spared 
nothing which could minister to her com- 
fort, cultivate her intellect, and polish her 
manners. He had, as she felt, transformed 
through his alchemy a bit of base metal into 
shining gold. In her eyes he was a king, 
and "the king can do no wrong." He was 

23 



a god, and at his shrine she bowed in pros- 
trate adoration. So crept the serpent into 
Eden. 



Samson's foxes with firebrands fastened 
to their tails were no quicker to set in flame 
the ripe wheat-fields of the Philistines than 
were the fiery tongues of scandal to spread 
the burning wrath of aristocratic Boston. 
True, the standard of morals had previously 
sagged low, through the vicious example of 
some of the officials of the crown, but after 
all, the bone and the sinew of the colonial 
town, the wealthy merchants, the scholarly 
citizens that Harvard College had been 
training for a hundred years, and that sub- 
stantial element of the population in whom 
the influence of Puritan principles still sur- 
vived — were ablaze with horror and indig- 
nation as the story sped upon it way. 

As if to add to the conspicuity of the prin- 
cipal offender, just at this critical moment 
came the news from England of the death 
of an uncle — Sir Thomas Frankland, one 
of the Lords of the Admiralty. The baro- 
netcy of Thirsk had fallen to the nephew in 
America, as the nearest of kin ; and hence- 
forth he was to be known as Sir Charles 
Henry Frankland, baronet. But inherited 
title and large estates were of no avail to 
restore the good opinion which he had reck- 

24 



lessly flung away. Society felt itself out- 
raged; and when Agnes Surriage came to 
preside over his domestic establishment, his 
neighbors curtly declined invitations which 
once they would have been proud to ac- 
cept, and the doors of the great mansions 
of Beacon Street were shut in Frankland' s 
face. 

Not infrequently the voice of conscience 
may be silenced by absorption in some new 
and fascinating occupation. Sometimes, too, 
when a man is cut to the quick by insults 
evoked by his own conduct, he may con- 
temptuously turn his back upon his critics 
and his enemies. Probably, it was some- 
thing of this sort which led Frankland to 
exchange his social ostracism in Boston for 
the enjoyments of country life. 

Twenty-five miles southwest of the colo- 
nial capital, in the heart of a heavily wooded 
district, was the town of Hopkinton. Incor- 
porated in 1 715, it was still an insignificant 
village ; but its romantic situation, the fer- 
tility of the soil, and the springs of pure 
water gushing from the surrounding hills 
combined to make it an unusually attractive 
site for a country estate such as Frankland 
had been familiar with in his native Eng- 
land. On the borders of the little town 
he purchased a tract of five hundred acres. 
One who visited the place some years ago 
draws a glowing picture of its beauty. He 

25 



says: "Frankland's property was on the 
western slope of a noble eminence called in 
the Indian tongue Magunco, 'the place of 
great trees.' Here, in earlier times, John 
Eliot had gathered an Indian congregation 
and built a rude place of worship. The 
summit of the hill commands a view of Wa- 
chusett and Monadnock toward the north- 
west ; of a rich and varied landscape to the 
south, and on the east of the charming vil- 
lage of Ashland, where the Concord river 
and the Cold Springs blend their waters. ' ' 
Here Frankland laid out a princely do- 
main, and erected a stately manor-house 
which reflected his memories of the country 
homes of the English aristocracy. Through 
the chestnut forest, which formed a noble 
park, a broad avenue wound its way to the 
entrance of the mansion. The slope of 
Magunco afforded opportunity for terraces 
blooming with native and imported flowers; 
while the grounds immediately surrounding 
the dwelling were planted with rare shrubs, 
and shaded with great elms. In 1858 the 
house was destroyed by fire; but the foun- 
dation-stones of the costly building linger 
still. A friend of the writer of this paper 
— a cultivated New England woman — re- 
calls from the days of her childhood fre- 
quent visits to the historic place. The salient 
features of the great estate were then easily 
identified, and the noble mansion, soon to 
26 



be swept away by remorseless flames, re- 
vealed something of its original majesty in 
the Corinthian pillars of the wide and lofty 
hall, and in the tattered tapestry which clung 
to the mouldering walls. 

Even to this day elms of Frankland's 
planting tower above the lawn ; the outline 
of the box hedges of the gardens can be 
traced, and pear and apple trees, venerable 
with moss, survive the decay of a hundred 
and sixty years. 

There is little except local tradition to 
enable us to picture the life which Frank- 
land led in the rural retreat which his taste 
and wealth had called into being. Perhaps 
it is as well that no authentic information 
can be obtained. For the glimpses which 
we get of this period of his career only make 
it evident that close upon the betrayal of 
his sacred trust had followed a lowering of 
ethical standards, and a weakening of moral 
fibre. Stories have been handed down of 
bacchanalian feasts, at which the guests were 
men and women of a sadly different type 
from Frankland's former associates. We 
hear of costly wines flowing like water; of 
boon companions ending a night's banquet 
in stupid drunkenness or brutal quarrels; 
and of the lord of the manor drowning the 
ever-present voice of conscience in revelry 
with those whom his own refinement would 
once have led him to despise. 
27 



It requires no vivid imagination to pic- 
ture the wretchedness of the hapless woman, 
who knew that this degradation of a noble 
life had begun in a guilty love for her. Add- 
ed to the pangs of remorse for her own lost 
purity was the agony of witnessing the grad- 
ual but steady crumbling of the foundations 
of character in one whom she still loved 
with a passionate devotion. 

Ancient records are extant which show 
that Frankland's country life did not pre- 
vent his attention to his duties as Collector 
of the port of Boston. But in 1754 a law- 
suit involving his heirship to the Manor of 
Thirsk in Yorkshire demanded his return 
to his native country. With him went the 
unhappy Agnes. It seems that Frankland 
hoped that his own persuasions, reinforced 
by the rare loveliness, the charm of manner, 
and the mental cultivation of Agnes, would 
prevail to secure her recognition by his kins- 
folk in England. But in this — as might 
have been expected — he was doomed to 
bitter disappointment. His haughty mother 
and his sister, the Countess of Chichester, 
alike refused an interview with the woman 
who might be Frankland's wife in fact, but 
not in the eyes of the law, nor with the 
sanction of the church. 

Then, as never before, must have burst 
upon Agnes the terrible revelation of her 
false position. Wherever she turned her 
28 



steps, on either side of the Atlantic, the 
women with whom her native gifts and 
trained intellect entitled her to mingle on 
equal terms shunned the possibility of her 
leprous touch. She was an outcast, as com- 
pletely beyond the pale of social recognition 
as if the " scarlet letter" of the old Puritan 
tradition had been branded on her bosom. 
As her memory retraced the pathway she 
had traveled, there must have sprung up 
within her heart a longing — now impossi- 
ble of realization — that she were once 
more the barefooted, but innocent, maid of 
the Fountain Inn, at Marblehead. 

Embittered by his rejection on the part 
of his relatives, and conscious that he was 
only tolerated by his former friends in pub- 
lic life, Frankland turned his face toward 
the continent of Europe. At that period of 
history Portugal was in effect a dependency 
of the British Empire. While a golden 
stream of wealth still flowed into her coffers 
from her South American possessions, and 
luxury and extravagance were fostered by 
riches gained without labor, the Portuguese 
monarchy, ever threatened with Spanish 
conquest, would have tottered to its fall, but 
for the strong support of English diplo- 
macy, backed by English bayonets. Lis- 
bon had become the most dissolute of the 
European capitals. Its beauty and splendor, 
its delightful climate and gay society had 
29 



attracted to it the idle rich from many lands, 
but especially from England. Toward the 
English colony in this pleasure-loving capi- 
tal Frankland gravitated by a natural force. 
For predominant among these expatriated 
Britons was a class who, like himself, had 
either lost caste at home or could not brook 
the moral restraints of Anglo-Saxon civili- 
zation and religion. The social qualities 
of Frankland, his facinating manners, and 
his newly-inherited wealth and title soon 
made him foremost in the dissipations which 
engrossed this company of voluntary exiles. 
One of his biographers hints that, although 
in Boston he had maintained at least a sem- 
blance of conformity to the Church of Eng- 
land, he now adopted the skeptical opinions 
of Bolingbroke and La Rochefoucauld, and, 
like hundreds of others, before and since 
his day, found a convenient hiding-place 
from the pursuit of Conscience in the fog- 
banks of Unbelief . 

VI 

It was the first day of November, 1755. 
That morning the sun had risen in un- 
clouded splendor. As its rays fell upon 
the palaces and spires of the city, and 
sparkled on the mimic waves of the Tagus, 
Lisbon, always beautiful, seemed to have 
acquired a new loveliness. The balmy 
and soft air temperature made the autumn 

30 



day like one borrowed from the early 
summer. 

With the dawn the population from the 
homes of the rich and poor alike poured 
into the streets and squares, and packed to 
the doors every one of Lisbon's seventy 
churches. From the vast spaces of the Ca- 
thedral to the narrow aisles of the humbler 
chapels where mass was said, every place of 
worship was thronged to suffocation. For 
this was All-Saints Day, when, as in all Ro- 
man Catholic countries, solemn commem- 
oration of the dead goes hand-in-hand with 
holiday festivities. 

In the cool of the morning Frankland, 
accompanied by a lady of the English colony, 
whose name has not been preserved to us, 
had driven out to witness the varied scenes 
which the streets presented, or to enjoy the 
breezes from the broad bosom of the Tagus. 
The Cathedral clock had just tolled the hour 
of ten, when, though the heavens were still 
without a cloud, there burst upon aston- 
ished Lisbon a long roll of deafening thun- 
der, not from the blue dome above, but 
from the depths of earth beneath. With 
no other warning, the surface of the ground 
heaved in vast billows like the swelling of 
the ocean tides. As if some subterranean 
giant, such as the old mythologies fancied 
to be buried under Aetna, were struggling 
to stand erect, the foundation-stones of the 

3i 



stateliest buildings were lifted from their 
ancient places. Structures which were of 
yesterday and those hoary with the history 
of ages alike toppled into indiscriminate des- 
olation. Down came the roofs and walls 
of the crowded churches, crushing out the 
lives of the trapped worshipers within. In 
three minutes thirty thousand souls had 
perished. But the first fearful shock was 
followed by others, each adding its quota 
to the death-roll of Nature's desperate bat- 
tle, until sixty thousand of Lisbon's popu- 
lation lay buried in its ruins. Those who 
survived the cataclysm long recalled the 
nightmare horror of groans and shrieks for 
help which made the day one of hideous 
memories. 

Suddenly a cry rang through the ruined 
city: "To the quay!" The thousands 
who had escaped from the falling buildings 
choked the streets which led in the direc- 
tion of the harbor. There a beautiful and 
massive quay, built of white marble, had 
recently been erected at a vast cost to the 
nation. As yet it stood unmoved. But 
hardly had the multitude taken refuge on its 
broad platform than there came a fearful 
sequence to the convulsion of the earth. 
At Lisbon the Tagus is a full mile in 
breadth. From shore to shore the waters 
receded toward the Atlantic, leaving the 
bar exposed to view. How many minutes 

32 



elapsed has never been recorded — but as 
the luckless fugitives looked seaward they 
saw a mighty wall of water, fifty feet in 
height, rolling in to engulf them. Caught 
in its remorseless grip, ships of every size 
and build were swept upon the shore. Be- 
neath the quay there opened an abyss; 
and, when the tidal-wave again retired, the 
marble quay, the refugees who had sought 
its shelter, and the shattered vessels — all 
had disappeared. 

VII 

But what of those with whom this essay 
is the more immediately concerned? 

We can picture Frankland and his com- 
panion, as, in the full enjoyment of the 
sweet morning air, the delicious sunshine, 
and the brilliant coloring of the motley 
throng through which they drove, they chat- 
ted as gaily as the volatile Lisbonese them- 
selves. 

Just where a narrow street was cast into 
shadow by the stately mansion of a Por- 
tuguese noble, Dom Francesco da Ribeiro, 
their conversation suddenly was checked by 
a deep rumbling out of the earth beneath 
them. A moment more, and the huge struc- 
ture, past which lay their road, toppled from 
its base. The avalanche of stone buried 
the horses, the carriage and its occupants. 
The only recollection of that terrible mo- 

33 



ment which Frankland could recall in after 
years was that the woman beside him, in 
her death-agonies, set her teeth in his arm, 
piercing the sleeve, and tearing the flesh 
within. To his dying hour he kept the em- 
broidered and laced coat that bore such fear- 
ful witness to the tragedy, and once in each 
after year, with that memorial before his 
eyes, he kept a day of fasting, humiliation 
and prayer. 

But we anticipate. Crushed by an over- 
whelming weight, and helpless to move hand 
or foot, Frankland did not wholly lose con- 
sciousness. What thoughts crowded upon 
his mind; what agonies of remorse, and what 
yearnings to undo the wrong he had wreaked 
upon a trustful girl — we only know from 
the effects upon his later life. He never 
told them in words. They have no record 
in his diary which is still preserved in the 
archives of the Historical Society of Mas- 
sachusetts. 

But where, meantime, was the unhappy 
Agnes? Startled by the premonitions of the 
coming cataclysm, and anticipating its hor- 
rors, her one absorbing thought was not for 
her own life, but for that of the man she 
loved. Before her own dwelling had gone 
down in the general ruin, her woman's wit 
foresaw that gold would be the only power 
prevailing upon the terror-stricken throng 
to aid her in her search for Frankland. So 

34 



she had gathered up, and hidden upon her 
person, all the money which the house con- 
tained. Then she rushed out, in total ignor- 
ance of the way that Frankland had taken, 
to find her path blocked everywhere by the 
ruins, her own safety in constant peril from 
falling walls, and to be jostled and cursed 
by those whose fright made them utterly 
indifferent to the needs of any but them- 
selves. 

Through the stopped-up ways, which half 
an hour before had been streets lined with 
splendid houses, she wandered distracted 
with fear, yet with every faculty alert. An 
hour — two hours — had passed in fruitless 
search, when, as she tried to climb a huge 
hillock of the dtbris, her quick ear caught 
the pitiful groaning of a voice she knew. In 
a moment she had flung herself upon the 
heap of ruins, and thrown the whole force 
of her vigorous arms into the effort to lift 
the mass of stone and timber pinning down 
Frankland by it weight. In vain she strained 
her muscles, and bruised her soft hands. 
Something more than a woman's strength 
was needed if Frankland was to be saved. 
In desperation she appealed to the hurrying 
crowd, brutalized by sheer terror. As well 
have cried to the stones that were crushing 
out his life ! Even then hope did not die 
in that brave heart. A group of sailors from 
one of the wrecked ships came stumbling 

35 



over the mound in which her beloved lay. 
Quick as thought, she spread out before 
their hungry eyes her hands filled with glit- 
tering gold-coins. The bait was too tempting 
to be ignored, even in such an hour. The 
brawny seamen laid hold upon the beams and 
blocks of stone, and struggled with them, 
as if around the capstan they were heaving 
an anchor from the depths. Slowly but 
surely their hands tore away the covering 
of that living grave, and Frankland lay re- 
vealed to the eyes of the woman whose love 
had saved him from certain and horrible 
death. 

Fast upon the heels of the earthquake 
followed pursuing flames. Uncounted thou- 
sands of candles, blazing on the altars of 
the churches, had set on fire all that was 
combustible in the ruined city. Somehow — 
and with no loss of time — they must flee 
from the conflagration already upon their 
track. Again Agnes plied successfully the 
lever which wealth placed in her hands. 
The desperately injured and half-conscious 
Frankland was carried on an extemporized 
litter to a temporary refuge. One account 
makes his place of shelter to have been 
a house spared by the convulsion, at Be- 
lem, where the Tagus flows into the sea. 
Another narrative relates that, from the 
hills above Lisbon, Frankland and Agnes 
watched the devouring flames which for 

36 



three days ate into the ruins of the most 
beautiful capital of Europe. 

VIII 

To those whose summer days are spent 
upon the rugged coast where the cliffs of 
New England fling back the surges of the 
sea there is a pivotal moment which we 
call "the turning of the tide." It is the 
instant when the hand of the God of Nature 
reverses the outward flow of the mighty 
waters, and bids them take their shoreward 
way. From that instant begins the strange 
movement which, pulsing through tidal-bay 
and tributary creek, buries out of sight the 
slime and ugly deposits which the ebb had 
exposed to view. But only for twelve short 
hours. Not so the "turn of the tide" in 
the life and character of Charles Henry 
Frankland. It was ' ' once for all. ' ' In that 
crisis of his history, when he lay like a buried 
corpse beneath the fallen walls, he had come 
face to face with God and eternity. Call 
it a moral revolution or a spiritual conver- 
sion, in either case it was a lastifig trans- 
formation. ' ' By their fruits ye shall know 
them. " He was impatient of delay in mak- 
ing such reparation as was in his power for 
the wrong which awakened Conscience could 
no longer tolerate. Somewhere in the sub- 
urbs of Lisbon was found a priest of the 

37 



Church of Rome ; and, while the earth had 
not yet ceased to tremble, and the smoke of 
the burning town still hovered over its ruins, 
Frankland and Agnes were joined in lawful 
marriage. 

But beneath their eyes was the desolation 
of Lisbon. Every memory which the sight 
aroused was freighted with regrets. Little 
wonder that few weeks elapsed before the 
good ship Swithington, with favoring winds, 
was bearing them swiftly toward Frank- 
land's native land. It was an English ves- 
sel, and on board was a clergyman of the 
English Church. Little as either Frankland 
or Agnes had hitherto exhibited of the spirit 
of religion, both were nominally of the Pro- 
testant faith. So, lest any possible ques- 
tion should arise to cast doubt upon the 
validity of their marriage, a second cere- 
mony was performed in the solemn ritual 
of the Anglican communion, and with the 
officers of the ship as witnesses. 

It is highly probable that the story of 
Frankland 's deliverance from a horrible 
death, of the heroic devotion of Agnes, and 
of their marriage under such strange cir- 
cumstances, had preceded their arrival in 
England. For, certain it is that when at 
the ancestral home of the family at Matter- 
sea, in Nottinghamshire, Frankland led Ag- 
nes to meet his proud mother, the matron 
opened her arms in welcome to a beloved 

38 



daughter, and the Countess of Chichester 
wept tears of gratitude as she embraced the 
woman who had saved her brother's life. 



IX 

It would be interesting to trace this ro- 
mance of veritable history down to its end. 
It would lead us where Agnes, Lady Frank- 
land, became the admiration of the courtly 
circle in which shone such brilliant names 
as Walpole, Pitt, Pelham, and Chesterfield. 
We should follow her and her husband 
again and again across the sea. We should 
pass from one stately room to another of 
the house in Garden Court Street, which 
the ancient chronicles of Boston picture as 
the noblest mansion in America. In her 
country-seat at Hopkinton we should mingle 
with the guests who paid their court to a 
hostess unrivaled in her gracious hospital- 
ity. We should see the fisherman's daugh- 
ter of Marblehead, and barefoot maid of the 
Fountain Inn, as, with dignity softened by 
native wit and grace of manner behind which 
was gentleness of heart, she charmed the 
refined and cultivated society of the city 
which once had cast her out. 

We should learn that, with all the selfish 
narrowness which wealth and social rank 
sometimes engender, this was a woman not 
ashamed to "look unto the rock from which 

39 



she was hewed, and the hole of the pit 
whence she was digged." For we should 
find her providing for every member of her 
humble kindred, welcoming her fisherman 
brother to her splendid home, sharing its 
luxury with a poverty-stricken sister, and 
sparing no money or time to educate that 
sister's children. We should witness the 
effort to undo the evil her one great sin had 
wrought, and to atone for what, though for- 
given, could never be forgotten — as she 
moved a ministering spirit where sin and suf- 
fering found hope, comfort, and cheer in her 
gentle presence and loving words of sym- 
pathy. And, could we follow still farther 
the stream of these two lives, as they flowed 
calmly on together, we should see that which, 
though far from rare, is one of the elements 
which make life "worth living" — the un- 
selfish devotion of a true woman to her hus- 
band. 

X 

High up on the wall of Ireston Church, 
near Bath, in England, the curious visitor, 
with difficulty, deciphers the epitaph in mem- 
ory of "Sir Charles Henry Frankland, of 
Thirkleby, in the County of York, Baro- 
net. ' ' Its closing words read, ' ' This monu- 
ment is erected by his loving widow, Agnes, 
Lady Frankland." 



40 



Her own tomb is in the burial-ground of 
St.Pancras Church, in Chichester. 



XI 

From the pages of Ovid some of us may 
recall the story of Pygmalion, king of Cy- 
prus. A royal sculptor, out of purest ivory 
he carved a statue so rarely beautiful that 
he fell in love with the work of his own 
hands. Among the grim rocks of Marble- 
head and in prosaic Boston, New England 
reproduces the charming myth. Frank- 
land's keen perception saw purest ivory in 
the white soul of the barefoot maid of the 
Fountain Inn. His kindly interest wrought 
out of that material an image of transcendent 
grace — only to kindle in his own soul a 
passionate love for the product of his gen- 
erosity. We may not blind our eyes to the 
wrong which that love wreaked. But we can 
acknowledge the repentance and the rep- 
aration — even though they had their birth 
in what our Puritan forefathers called "an 
act of God." 



THIS PAPER WAS WRITTEN FOR 
THE CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB, 
AND WAS READ BEFORE THE 
CLUB MONDAY EVENING NO- 
VEMBER THE THIRTEENTH, 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND 
ELEVEN tp EDITION, SIX 
HUNDRED AND SIXTY 
COPIES, PRINTED FOR THE 
MEMBERS OF THE CLUB, IN 
THE MONTH OF JUNE, NINE- 
TEEN HUNDRED AND TWELVE 




JUL 24 lyiZ 



